


Good Cop, Sad Cop

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22415542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: Who could resist? Who could be offered this and not fall, not surrender, into it?
Relationships: James Hathaway/Robert Lewis
Comments: 24
Kudos: 150





	Good Cop, Sad Cop

**Author's Note:**

> A few weeks ago I woke up from a dream where I'd been writing a fic. Once I was awake I couldn't remember anything about the fic except that it was called Good Cop, Sad Cop - so I guess at least we know which fandom it was! Here's a little run of drabbles that were inspired by that title.

**I: Hathaway**

I’m not exactly depressed, but you couldn’t mistake me for happy. Lewis doesn’t.

And I hate that how I am affects him, that my inability to sail, cheerily, through life worries him so much. He gets irritable— _What’s the matter with you?!_ It’s because he doesn’t know what to do to fix me. Achievable goals, sir.

Not his job, anyway, but when has that ever stopped him? Not his job, not his fault. _A melancholy of mine own_ , truly.

* * *

Tell me, is there anything worse than feeling unsalvageably bleak, trying to pretend you’re fine for someone, and failing, utterly?

**II: Lewis**

I want to kick Hathaway up the backside, sometimes, I really do . . . which is all wrong. 

I don’t really want to. I’m as frustrated with myself as I am with him. He needs something; some _one_. He needs someone to take care of him. I don't mean he’s helpless, that he can’t look after himself—he’s not a kid. But it’s like he doesn’t have an instinct for seeking comfort; for love. Makes my blood boil if I think about it because you learn all that from your mam and dad. Or you don’t.

Breaks my bloody heart.

**III: Lewis**

God, he’s difficult. Even when he looks so hollowed out he’s practically transparent, he’ll swear blind he’s fine and tell you to sod off. I never know if I’m doing the right thing or not, making him come back to my place.

Well, I say that. Things are a bit clearer now.

* * *

Tonight, I bring him home with me after work because we’ve had an awful day—the latest in a long line of awful days: a third body, a third tragedy Hathaway feels personally responsible for, for no good reason I can see. I’m making a brew and he’s slouched against the fridge looking so blank, so empty, he’s genuinely frightening me and I find myself saying, _Do you want a hug?_ because I don’t know what else I _can_ say to him—the truth is, I’m out of ideas.

As soon as I’ve said it I expect some kind of evasive manoeuvres or piss-take from him, but it’s like he doesn’t even have the energy for that. He leans, heavily, on the kitchen counter, looks at me with absolute resignation and says, _At this point, you could hold me nonstop for a fortnight and it wouldn’t be enough._

**IV: Lewis**

I suppose what an inspector should say to a sergeant who’s just come out with something like that is, _Get yourself to Occupational Health first thing in the morning._

What I actually hear myself saying is, _We’d better make a start then, hadn’t we?_

I’m as stunned as he is and we stand there staring at each other, me with two teabags in my hand. 

He frowns at me and eventually he says, _You can’t mean that._

I don’t like being told what I do or don’t mean. And anyway, who else is going to hold him, if not me?

**V: Hathaway**

Never were two men less well equipped to negotiate the journey to a bedroom, but somehow we manage. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls his shoes off. I hover in the doorway until he sighs and says, _You can’t stay there all night_ , so I go in, not sure if I want to laugh, cry, or do a runner. He loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his shirt then lies down on what is obviously his side of the bed. The duvet cover’s mid-blue, inoffensive, poly-cotton—I mean, what else would he buy?

**VI: Hathaway**

I have a sort of out of body experience watching myself lie down next to him. He arranges us, manoeuvring me far enough down the bed that my feet are dangling off the end, and I don’t understand why he’s put us like that until the moment he pushes an arm under my neck and round my shoulders and pulls me tight against him . . . and my face is buried in his chest, pressed into the warm cotton of his work shirt, and all I can feel and see and smell is him. _Oh, Christ._

It’s so much.

**VII: Hathaway**

He starts rubbing circles into my back and asks, _Is this alright?_ I nod into his shirt, my nose rubbing against a plastic button. He says, _It’s OK, James, you can rest now_ , and a sound comes out of me, a sound that isn’t right; it’s the sound a glacier makes as an ice cliff shears off its leading edge; the sound that human ribs make as they’re broken by a surgeon trying to get to the damaged heart beneath. 

He pulls me in even closer and pushes the blunt ends of his fingers through my hair, digging them into the base of my neck. He holds me so tightly I realise I’ll probably have finger-shaped bruises for days—and that’s a good thought.

We lie there, him wrapped round me; me tucked into him. Who could resist? Who could be offered this and not fall, not surrender, into it?

I know we can’t actually stay like this for a fortnight. 

I listen to his heart and I know I could stay like this for the rest of my life. 

* * *

He says, _I don't know who needs this more—you or me._

**Author's Note:**

> In the first drabble, James quotes Jaques from As You Like It, Act 4, Scene 1: _But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects_
> 
> I was listening to Max Richter's piece Sleep a lot while I was writing this and I think, in particular, the atmosphere of the beautiful, soft, melancholy first half hour of the music [seeped in](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zueEq6rw8lA)


End file.
